War Stories
by Annwyl
Summary: A young diplomat is brought to PPTH under suspicious circumstances. Everyone is left stumped as to where he came from & how to treat him. Meanwhile, Wilson is being mysterious. House is puzzled. Ducklings quack. HumorDramaMedical
1. Prologue

A young diplomat is brought to PPTH under suspicious circumstances. Everyone is left stumped as to where he came from & how to treat him. Meanwhile, Wilson is being mysterious. House is puzzled. Ducklings quack. Humor/Drama/Medical Mystery

_GAH! Fixed typos. First submissions are difficult! Forgive the monkey. _

_First go at fanfic writing. Used to writing original works. Figured if I'm going to study fanfic, I might as well learn how to write it, too. I'm actually a sociologist with a background in forensics, by trade. Please be gentle. Constructive criticism always welcome. Reviews appreciated. _

_Feed the monkey. _

_Medical drama to follow. I don't own any of these characters. I don't sail any ship. _

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_**Prologue**_

Colder than a witch's teat. Possibly even colder than that - enough to freeze the nipples off a polar bear.

Just outside the doors, a short, bundled creature sporting a knee-length navy blue woolen coat and a long green scarf buries its head against the chest of a rather amused James Wilson. He leans down, wraps his arm around the small thing, nuzzling its cheek to warm his nose. They share a laugh, or so it would seem from the safe, warm distance where House observes the display of comfortable affection. Wilson and the creature are still wrapped in this rather awkward winter-clothing-impaired embrace, rocking slightly as if trying to stave off the cold.

A stray lock of curly auburn hair gently gets brushed away from a cold face and gets tucked back under a brimmed winter hat by Wilson's gloved hand. He smiles down at the creature, whose face House still can't see, in an almost nauseatingly sweet way.

From the warmth of the lobby, a lopsided grin creeps slowly across House's face.

_This is going to be a great day. _

The automatic doors of the hospital's main entrance slide open and with them cold air bursts in, sweeping powder-light snow along with it. The snow swirls around before melting in the warm indoor air as House lifts his gaze from the ground to his meet his friend's questioning look. Wilson dusts himself off as House takes a sip of his coffee and gestures in the general direction of the great frozen outdoors.

"So, who's the redhead?"

Wilson purses his lips and remains mum.

"Escort?"

"What?" Wilson asks, incredulous.

"Hooker?"

"NO!"

"Then who is she?"

"...A friend!" comes the incredulous reply.

"You play tonsil hockey at forty below with your friends? Damn, I guess I'm not as good a friend of yours as I thought I was. I'm devastated. No, no, I'm downright heartbroken," House quips as he turns to walk towards the elevators, leaving a speechless Wilson behind.

Stuttering, looking for the right response, Wilson follows, juggling his hat and his briefcase at the same time. "She's a friend, alright?" he calls after House.

"Mm-hmm," mumbles House, grinning, as he presses the elevator button, "Patient? Domestic violence victim?" Wilson remains stone-faced, giving House a look that borders on rightful indignation.

"Something has GOT to be wrong with her for you to be smitten. Sexual assault victim? Blind? Deaf? Dumb?" He pauses as Wilson looks at him, positively shellshocked, attempts to respond but is completely unable to do so.

"Cancer survivor patient's daughter! Man, that's almost downright poetical!" He pokes Wilson in the chest with his index finger, teasing. "Oh, you scoundrel you!"

"House, grow up! She's a friend." Wilson is not amused.

The elevator doors open silently. Wilson feels grateful for the escape but at the same time dreads being in a small, confined space with his friend. He knew questions were bound to arise - it was a bold move, to part ways like that on a Monday morning, in front of the hospital doors. But teasing is not the way to start a Monday morning... The lineup is one of cancer kids and hard, heart-breaking news to deliver. This isn't his idea of fun.

A receptionist from radiology and a nurse Wilson didn't recognize step into the elevator with them along with a pair of visitors. Wilson nods a curt hello to Smith, Johansson and Darrow, from cardiology as they run in, hoping to catch the elevator before the doors close. House holds the doors open with his cane for a few more visitors before shouting, in a loud, obnoxious voice: "GOING UP!"

In a rather agile move, House steps out of the elevator and smiles at Wilson. It takes a few seconds for it all to register - then realization crosses Wilson's face as he looks to the elevator button panel.

All the button, for all the floors, in either direction had been pressed. The last thing he sees as he sighs is a smiling House waving at him from outside the elevator doors.


	2. Identity

_I just discovered that stars don't show up when you post 'em as section headers, so I'm trying to repost this chapter. Thank you for the kind comments and encouragement. I'm hoping to post up chapters more often as I'm back for a while now._

_I don't own these guys. Wish I did._

_Feed the monkey. Monkeys need love._

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He can't speak.

He has no name.

No name, no voice, and no idea who he is. Everything in his head seems disconnected. Words are coming to him, in his mind and they make sense. He wants to ask the young woman in the white lab coat where he is. He wants to ask what day of the week it is. Who _she_ is. What time of day it is. How he got here. Who _he_ is. Why he hurts. Who could make the pain go away.

The young woman seems concerned for him. He can see it in her eyes. She wants to help. He wants to tell her he'd be okay. He knows all the words, but somehow, between his brain and his throat, something is failing. The words just stubbornly refuse to come out.

She speaks. The words she says make no sense to him. She frowns. She shows him words on a pad of paper. They, too, make no sense at all to him. He shakes his head in frustration.

And that's when the pain in his head come back. White, blinding, searing.

The scream that remains trapped in his mind is deafening.

He slips into unconsciousness.

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"Alright, what do we know!" barks House as he limps into the room, coffee in hand.

Chase peers over his crossword puzzle from the back of the room. "About what?"

"Our patient, dumbass." Foreman snaps, rolling his eyes as he pours himself some coffee and turns to house. "Male, mid-thirties, dumped in our ER at four in the morni-"

"No, _dumbass_, " mocks House, leaning into his words and his cane, "Wilson's new girl. What do we know about her."

"_Female_, 35, counts raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens among her favourite things," grins Chase as he rises to refill his cup, flashing Foreman a winning smile.

"Hardee har, Dame Edna," House mutters as he hangs his cane up on the white board and pulls out a marker. "Seriously, who is she?"

"Her name is of no importance and please, please don't do anything to scare her off?" comes a genuinely pleading request from the room door. House turns, smiling, to see Wilson standing there displaying a really bad case of hat hair for everyone to see. Evidently his little trip up the elevator had left him somewhat frazzled and concerned. Poor, poor Jimmy. Always and forever a hopeless romantic afraid of Big Brother Greg ruining all his hopes for love.

Oh this was going to be fun.

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Cameron rushes down the hall as fast as she can - their patient was stable, for now, but there was no telling how long this would last. She still hadn't been able to get any information out of the young man who had been dropped on their doorstep in the middle of the night.

Two nights ago, an orderly out for a break had found the man, lying face down in a tucked away corner behind one of the dumpsters out back behind the ER's service entrance doors. Not many people go out there, so it was lucky someone stumbled on him that quickly - judging by his condition and how cold his body temperature was, the attending ER physician estimated he'd been out there for a few hours already.

The man appeared catatonic - no one could elicit a response from him. His clothing held no identification, no markings, no wallet. All the tags had been cut off his clothes. He was repeatedly asked simple questions - his name, his age, his birth date - to no avail. He remained silent. The police were notified, but came up dry. The man did not match any missing person's description in the tri-state area or in the national databases. Nothing.

Medically, at first, nothing appeared to be wrong and just as the attending physician was about to release the patient to psychiatry, everything started going wrong. One by one, systems started to fail. Once the standard differentials fell apart, the hospital's Diagnostics department was called to help.

When Cameron came down to pick up the file for their new patient, no one knew what was wrong with him, or why he was displaying such a wide array of mysterious symptoms that seemed to wax and wane. Until such a time as she and the rest of her team, along with House, could sit down and figure this out, they'd have to isolate the man and keep the pain at bay.

She could tell, by looking into his eyes, that there was someone trapped in there. Someone who really wanted to come out and talk, someone who still had a soul and who had a story to tell... if only he could put the pieces of the puzzle back together again, somehow.

Somehow.


	3. Names

_Thanks to everyone for the comments! I really appreciate the encouragement. I'm trying to incorporate all the suggestions I am receiving. :) Thanks a million!_

_Hope you like the next chapter!_

_Feed the monkey. Still not mine. Bad monkey. :D_

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As Cameron walks into the room and tosses a file on the table, the others turn to her. She knows they are all waiting for her to return with the patient history but the least they can do is let her get a cup of coffee first. She shrugs and shakes her head. She frowns. House looks at her expectantly. Chase stares with that idiotic blank stare of his, while Foreman looks mildly amused. Wilson, she notes, looks frazzled and concerned for her at the same time. Searching for words, she rubs her forehead and looks up at Foreman who is standing in her way, arms crossed, looking awfully smug.

"You're standing between me and the sweet nectar of the gods. If you value your reproductive organs, you'll move. "

He steps out of the way.

"My, she's feisty. I like _her._" House snorts.

"You'll stop inhaling the fumes from the dry-erase markers and saying stupid things if you know what's good for you, House. " House mocks Cameron by silently lip-synching over her, puppeteering his left hand to speak along with her. She continues. "Otherwise, your gonads are in danger too. Assuming the drugs haven't shriveled them up to the size of raisins by now anyway." Silence as she pours the coffee into her cup, her back still turned to them all. "And House... don't make faces."

"_Zing!_"

"Oh, shut up Jimmy."

Cameron turns, stirring her coffee pointing her chin once at the file she had thrown on the glass table when she walked into the room.

"Our patient still hasn't spoken. We've no idea who he is and how he got here. ER ordered a CT, but couldn't see much in there. Couldn't rule out a brain injury, but then, it was Dr. Sorenson who was on call that night so who knows if it was a sober read. We should probably order an MRI and have it read by a radiologist who has half a chance of finding his own ass with both hands. Toxicology was negative."

House scratches his ear and frowns. "Alright - symptoms?"

Foreman flops down in a chair and stretches out, hands at the back of his head, then reaches for the file and leans back again.

"Well, part of the problem is that we know nothing. He can't tell us what he's feeling. We have a complete communication breakdown here. When he's conscious, he can't communicate with us. We can get a feeling for pain, but that's if we can keep him awake long enough. We could do a contrast MRI, body scan, run some blood work, get a feeling for inflammation if there is any."

Nodding all around.

"I'll do an LP, see what we've got. Maybe re-run all the basics and compare them to the ER tests, see if anything has changed." That was Cameron, voicing her opinion as she threw out her stirring stick.

"Alright," House agreed, "I'll be in my office avoiding work and trying not to get in anyone's way. I expect that's really helpful. Chase, when you're done impersonating high-quality wallpaper, why don't you call around and see if anyone has lost this guy. The police hadn't heard of him, but that doesn't mean no one's missing him. Then, be a dear and go fill in for me at the clinic. Oh, and do wear your short shorts!"

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He woke, briefly. There she was again. Pretty young lady. She spoke to him. He could tell by her inflection that she was asking him a question. Her words made no sense at all to him.

Next to her, a dark skinned man looked hurried. He, too, was speaking. The words were jumbled. Nonsensical. Maybe time would heal all this. Maybe madness would take over. Anything. Something. Something had to change, otherwise he'd go mad.

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Wilson closed the door to his office, hung his coat and set his briefcase down. He ran a hand through his hair. Ducking around House was going to be a challenge. There was no way he was going to evade the questioning for very long. How could he? The man was like a bloodhound. Nothing would throw him off the track. No amount of traps, cross-contamination or sample tampering would ever keep him away from finding a way to crack the code.

_I'm doomed._

At least he'd warned _her_ about what was coming. He'd told her what to expect - the phone calls, the impromptu visits, the odd emails, the intrusions, the appearances at the most inopportune and uncomfortable times...

He sits at his desk and rubs his forehead, then switches on his desk lamp before opening up his calendar for the day. He'd never quite gotten into modern technology when it came to that - he liked the old-fashionned day planner. He felt it kept him human, especially considering he had to deal with such a terrifying, cold-hearted killer day in and day out.

He sighs, leans back in his chair and thinks of the night before.

_"... and then, all I heard was 'Jimmy, you son of a bitch, are you the one who put glycerin in the cupcakes?!' "_

_She was laughing hysterically along with him as they walked hand in hand in the moonlit park on their way back to her place. _

_"I'd made them with glycerin and chocolate flavored exlax - poor bastard never knew what hit him until he was doing the 10 meter dash from the couch to the bathroom like his ass was on fire... He still steals my food, but he no longer touches anything I bake."_

_Her laughter was nothing short of... delicious, to him. He was surprised at how fast he was falling. How hard. To his disbelief, she was nothing like anyone else he'd ever been with. Sound of mind, sound of body, sound of spirit. A musician, professor at Princeton, whom he'd met at an oncology conference where she had been given a performance as part of a fundraising gala. The two of them had hit it off immediately. Her quirky sense of humor had piqued his curiosity right away. _

_He'd spent the night. For the first time in his long string of relationships, things were going... slowly. Things were feeling right. He didn't feel the need to rush. There was an odd, familiar comfortability between them and he relished in it. They'd gone to bed, together, and simply fell asleep, her snuggled tightly against him. It felt nice to hold someone close again. _

_The only question was - how was the jealous big brother going to react to it all..._

A knock at the door. Wilson's eyes snap open and he shakes his head to regain his bearings.

"Come in."

A head peaks in.

"Disturbing you?"

"No."

"Daydreaming?"

"Yes. No. What?"

"I can tell. You've got this _look._"

"Look? What look!"

"This _House will know, oh my God I'm so gonna die and it will be horrible, oh my God, I don't even have a will... maybe Cameron will save me, I could hide behind her! _ look."

"Oh ha." Paper shuffling, pen in hand, time to sign forms. Yes.

House crosses the room and flops down in the chair on the other side of Wilson's desk. Wilson looks up, sighs, puts the pen down and folds his hands on his desk, then forces a smile.

"What will it take for you to go away."

"A name."

"Herbert."

"You're kidding."

"Yes. Now go away."

"... that's not fair."

"You didn't specify any rules. I won fair and square. Now go away."

Pouting, but realizing that Wilson had, in fact, won fair and square, House stomped out of Wilson's office, vowing to return with a better thought out plan.


End file.
